An Illawarra up and coming business, Fair Food Forager has launched an innovative new smart phone application for Android and IOS users.

The release of Fair Food Forager’s mobile application in August of this year, means finding your next sustainable meal won’t be a challenge. At the press of a few buttons find cafes, restaurants, grocers and producers that are making steps to ensure their business provides ethical options for consumers. Currently the app reaches Australia and New Zealand, recently branching out into the Northern Hemisphere with ethical options in the UK.

The app, is right now being used across Australia for Fair Food Week, sharing and promoting the story of food. The app has 11 different icons that represent different areas of sustainable practice. For example; Fair Trade, Sustainable seafood, reduced food waste, reduced plastic waste, chemical free, local produce, homemade, charitable, ethical / free range, vegan and vegetarian.

The app will create a platform for you to find food that is not only great quality but the businesses listed are rated by you, meaning you can easily find the places that really deserve your money. (and won’t hurt your wallet or the environment). Visit cafés, restaurants, markets and producers that care about every part of their business, including the planet. No more will there be that overwhelming feeling of not knowing where to start or where to hunt down the most sustainable grocer. The Fair Food Forager app is your tool to make ethical choices towards food, without the added time and pressure of researching businesses yourself.

FFF is a gateway to taking the things learnt and drawn attention to during fair food week and translating that into an accessible, easy way to commit these ideas to practice. Do you want to eat more vegetarian and vegan meals? Cut down your impact on the environment in a positive way? Don’t be so daunted by the task at hand, this handy app will guide you into a holistic approach. Enjoy and experience, connect with your food and where it comes from.

Gone are the days of fast food stops on long trips. Step out of the car and avoid the build-up of rubbish and mess from eating on the go. Simply type your location into the app and scroll through the sustainable eats in the area. You never know what delicious café you might discover.

There is an urgent need to address inequities in the current food system with evidence-based community food policies that ensure and protect peoples’ access to healthy, nutritious and culturally appropriate food.

The controversial SBS program Struggle Street, screened on Wednesday May 6, is a window into the lives of suburban residents in Sydney, now one of the most expensive cities in the world. In the food desert where the program is set major thoroughfares are festooned with the livery of McDonalds’, Hungry Jacks and KFC. A take-away sandwich or pre-made salad at the local service station is considered a treat; Coca-Cola and calorie-laden energy drinks are meal substitutes for children, teens and adults alike. Curried sausages top the menu choices at home.

Evidence of these poor diets is stark, ranging from malnutrition to obesity, Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

For the cast of Struggle Street and many other city dwellers access to fresh, healthy and affordable food - and especially fresh fruit and vegetables - is limited. Low-income residents stranded in food deserts have limited access to the transportation needed to perform household provisioning tasks such as grocery shopping. The small in-city grocers that improved neighbourhoods in low- to moderate-income housing areas have all but disappeared at the expense of a profit-driven supermarket duopoly.

Food insecurity is a daily challenge for families trying to survive on limited means, leading to increasing reliance on food charities.

According to last year’s Food Bank Hunger Report 516,000 Australians rely on food relief per month.

Thirty-five per cent of clients are children. Up to 60,000 people are turned away from the 2,500 charities that struggle to support them. Sixty per cent more food is needed to meet demand.

We are not alone. One in seven Americans now relies on a food bank and there are 1,000 operating in Germany. Feeding Britain (2014), a parliamentary inquiry into hunger in the UK, attributes the new ‘food bank movement’ to the inability of citizens to meet increasing costs of food, housing and utilities that outstrip growth in wages. Further, people lack the budgeting skills that might help them get by with less.

In Sydney, as in many other cities, social enterprises are doing their best to fill the gaps in food provisioning that governments do not. Food rescue charity Oz Harvest turns thousands of kilograms of waste food into meals for the most vulnerable everyday. The Wayside Chapel in Kings’ Cross has been feeding the lonely and destitute since 1964. The Chapel café provides a safe, relaxed environment for patrons to enjoy the dignity and sociability of purchasing and sharing a cheap meal. This sentiment also underpins the mission of Lentil as Anything, a non-profit restaurant chain in Melbourne and Sydney where customers pay what they can afford for a multicultural, communal dining experience that welcomes workers, refugees and the long-term unemployed.

These initiatives and a range of other urban food projects provide residents with food security, education, health and social benefits. Many are threatened by urban sprawl and rezoning of agricultural land; others struggle to continue due to lack of funding and reliance on volunteer labour. Research into their significant and genuine contribution to strengthening community food systems is needed.

Though comprehensive studies of food production on the peri-urban fringe of Sydney and farming in the Sydney Basin have been conducted there is a lack of data on urban food production and gaps in land use data for the City of Sydney. There is little information about who participates in local food networks and community gardens, and no measurement of quantities of produce. Few local councils have food policies, the exceptions being the Blue Mountains, Fairfield, Hawkesbury, the Illawarra region and Penrith.

In the City’s Strategic Vision for a Sustainable Sydney 2030 food systems are conspicuously absent.

Community food plans must take a whole-of-systems approach in mapping agricultural activities through developing a framework that enables us to understand and measure how these activities combine in ‘food flows’ that contribute health, social, economic and ecological benefits to residents of the city. Successful models include Ontario’s Local Food Act (2013), New York City’s Five Borough Farm Project (2012) and the City of Melbourne Food Policy, the planning of which began in 2011.

Projects with long-term vision to strengthen community food systems must measure the macronutrient content of these food flows, and determine how better access can be provided to city dwellers, and particularly the socio-economically marginalised. The formation of this policy must be systems-based, community-led and co-created to succeed.

Because hidden hunger is a public problem for which we are all responsible.

Think.Eat.Save was the name of the UNSW World Environment Day seminar that attempted to draw attention to food waste. This it achieved to some extent but having representatives of the three main political parties on the panel turned it into something of a recitation of known attitudes to climate change and the value of markets rather than to initiatives in reducing the $5.2 billion value of Australia's food waste every year.

Only two speakers had something substantial to say about food waste and they were people doing something practical about it. One was young UNSW scientist Veena Sahajwalla who showed the audience building material her team had developed that is made from food waste — from the inedible macadamia nut shell. That's seeing a problem in one area as a solution in another. The other was OzHarvest founder, Ronnie Khan, whose organisation has salvaged tonnes of food wastes to feed needy Australians.

Pointing to other practical initiatives in food education was Randwick Greens councillor, Lindsay Shurey, who in her welcoming speech highlighted the three Eastern Suburbs councils' successful Compost Revolution which has attracted 5000 participants in the region who reduced waste to landfill by 400 tonnes and has now been taken up by local governments in Victoria and elsewhere in NSW. She went on to talk about the Randwick Sustainability Hub, the community education program that includes courses and workshops in community leadership and food, including the long-running Organic Gardening course and the new course in Food Forest Gardening offered by council's sustainability unit, the opening of council's Permaculture Interpretive Garden as well as council initiatives in community and school gardens.

Youth the main food wasters

It was during his video address that UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, Achim Steiner, pointed out that it is 18 to 24 year-olds who are the greatest wasters of food in Australia (and, therefore, a demographic that could bring significant change) and that 25-30 percent of school lunches are thrown away each school day. He also said that it would be useful to learn to distinguish between food product expiry dates and when food actually becomes inedible.

Later, student leader Osman Faruqi adressed this, saying that the age group are generally climate progressives and students in that age group don't have the money to shop at farmers' markets and other fresh food suppliers, and that this accounts for their preference for fast foods. It would account for the presence of fast food corporation, Subway, on campus which, it was reported, is now participating in the university's food waste program.

Cate Faehrmann, Greens Member of the NSW Legislative Council, tilted a little off course towards climate change in her initial comments, making the link to global food supply rather than focusing more on the theme of the evening — food waste. ALP National President, the young Jenny McAllister, didn't even mention the federal government's National Food Plan. Student leader Osman Faruqi spoke about university initiatives and the potential role of youth in addressing food waste issues. Ronnie Khan challenged the figure of $5.2 billion of food wasted every year in Australia, saying it was more like $7.8 billion worth. Her work in food rescue, of turning waste into nutrition, gave her figure credibility and clout.

Neolib adds little to food waste solutions

Bravely appearing on stage to round out the political spectrum was neoliberal economic fundamentalist in the NSW Legislative Council, the Liberal's Peter Phelps. While Peter made some good points, his responses seemed more faith based (faith in markets, that is) with repeated incantations common to the free market cult, that the market would solve all if only government would get out the way. He's also a member of the fringe group, the climate skeptics, though at one point he had to explain that he believes climate change is actually happening, only its not due to human causes. To judge by comments coming from the audience, there was a level of skepticism about Peter's belief.

Peter also said that when it comes to feeding people in lesser developed countries, government and NGOs should get out of the way of markets, though in referring to the export of African farm products to the UK he failed to explain how this would feed local people. Presumably by that other chanted incantation of the neoliberal cult, the economic trickle down effect. While this might work to some degree it has so far failed to provide any substantial solution though the market, he said, would solve all.

The market can provide solutions but it has to be an actual free market that offers opportunity to all businesses, especially small and medium food businesses. That's difficult in a national grocery market in which the supermarket duopoly controls an 80 percent share and engages in questionable procurement and competitive practices. I wanted to ask Peter how he reconciled his notion of free markets with that of Adam Smith, who I believe was critical of monopolies.

Peter's right, too, in saying that government can impede innovative initiatives and business, however his solution of it simply getting out of the way ignores the necessity of it acting to open up economic opportunity to small to medium food business by dealing with the allegedly uncompetitive practices of the duopoly.

Peter had more to say on the dominance of Australia's supermarket duopoly. Colesworth sell unblemished apples because their considerable market research discloses that this is what customers want, he claimed. Anyway, there are alternatives to the duopoly, he told the skepical audience. The market, after all, would solve whatever the problem is.

Ronnie Khan responded by talking about the impact of the market, referring to the fate of Australian fruit growers and of the canning industry and that we need to "look after our own farmers" by buying local and seasonal. She said the supermarkets decline "masses of products" and this leads to food waste. Her call was for all of us to take personal responsibility for our food choices.

Skimming the surface

Interesting though they are, the thing with these types of events is that they only skim the surface of issues and there's no opportunity to delve deeper into the thinking of the speakers. I heard this voiced over food and wine in the foyer.

I can't help but think that having all those politicians on the panel was less than useful. Politicians, we know, have greater speaking rights than others. If they wanted to utter something public about food and waste they could easily issue a media release that would more than likely get mainstream media coverage.

There are people out in the world doing a lot more about food supply and food waste than the major political parties and having those people talk about their technologies and projects instead of professional politicians would have been better. Was there a speaker from the Compost Revolution? No. Was there a speaker from Sydney Food Fairness Alliance? No. Was there a speaker from the university to talk about that institution's own waste reduction program? No. Was there one from the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance? No. Was there a speaker from the state government's Love Food Hate Waste program? No.

Perhaps this is nothing more than a reflection of institutional thinking by universities. Even though they can be innovators (an example being professor Veena Sahajwalla and her work), universities are often businesslike institutions, so perhaps we shouldn't expect more from them than asking mainstream politicians along. I, for one, expected more to do with innovation and positive examples of initiatives in the field of waste reduction and, from feedback, so did others.

The event was billed on the UNSW website and in its publicity as a UNSW Sustainability and the Institute of Environmental Studies hosting of a "Q&A-style Town Hall debate". It really wasn't a debate at all and was nothing like a Town hall public meeting... it was more the same question being put by the host to all of the speakers on the panel, making it a speaking opportunity for people who already have plenty of opportunity to do that. As is common with such events, time allocated for questions from the audience was too short and the host made it clear that questions from the audience and answers by the panel were likewise to be short. There were more potential questioners than the time allowed for them. This was unfortunate.

During audience question time, a conservative rose to say that not all conservatives share Peter Phelp's attitudes. And following that, a 17 year old asked the speakers what someone his age should do by way of useful work in the world. Responses from the panel were varied and perhaps not all that helpful, though I found Ronnie Khan's the best by far. She advised the questioner to discover his passion and act on that by way of his life work. That was less about seeking a career and more about finding the young man's vocation. Oh, and Peter Phelp had a solution and it was this: to avoid any work that involved dependency on government. That immediately brought a response from another of the speakers: "Like politicians, do you mean Peter?".